Chukat: No Hitting

At the beginning of their fortieth year in the wilderness, Moshe (“Moses” in English) is nearly 120 years old, and Aharon (“Aaron in English) is about 123. Their sister Miriam is even older.

And the Israelites came, the whole community, to the Wilderness of Tzin, at the first new moon [of the fortieth year], and the people stayed at Kadeish. And Miriam died there, and she was buried there. And there was no water for the community, and they assembled against Moshe and Aharon. (Numbers 20:1-2)

kadeish (קָדֵשׁ) = consecrating, treating as holy; one or possibly two locations south of the Negev region of Canaan.1

The first two campsites without water

This is the first time in 38 years that the Israelites have camped in a place without water. But during their first year after leaving Egypt, God’s pillar of cloud and fire led them to campsites with no drinking water twice. Three days after crossing the Reed Sea, they stop at Mara, where the water is too bitter to drink.

… And the people grumbled against Moshe, saying: “What will we drink?” And he cried out to God, who showed him a piece of wood. And he threw it into the water, and it became sweet … (Exodus 15:24-25)

Moses Striking the Rock, Mother Stories from the Old Testament, 1908

The second campsite without water is at Refidim, their last stop before Mount Sinai.

And the people quarreled with Moshe, and they said: “Give us water, and we will drink! … Why did you bring us up from Egypt to bring death to me and my children and my livestock by thirst?” And Moshe cried out to God, saying: “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!” Then God said to Moshe: “Cross over in front of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you, and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go! Hey, I will be standing before you there on the rock at Choreiv, and you will strike the rock, and water will go out from it, and the people will drink.” And Moshe did thus, before the eyes of the elders of Israel. (Exodus 17:2-6)

The third campsite without water

Thirty-eight years later, almost all of the Israelites who were adults when they left Egypt have died. (See last week’s post: Shelach-Lekha: Too Late.) Now the Israelites who have grown up in the wilderness pitch camp at Kadeish and discover that there is no water. They complain even more than the earlier generation.

And the people quarreled with Moshe, and they said, saying: “If only we had perished when our kinsmen perished in front of God! And why did you bring God’s assembly into this wilderness to die there, we and our cattle? And why did you make us go up from Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? [It is] not a place of seeds or figs or grapevines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink!” (Numbers 20:3-5)

They repeat their parents’ complaint at Refidim: that Moses brought them out of Egypt in order to let them die of thirst. But they also wish that they were dead, call Kadeish an evil place, and complain that it does not have any of the fruits that the twelves scouts brought back from Canaan many years ago.2 It sounds to me as though the lack of water is the last straw on top of some other, unspoken grievance. Yet the only recent event that would cause any grief is the death of Miriam.

The Torah gives us only three glimpses of Miriam. As a girl in Egypt, she kept an eye on her baby brother Moshe floating on the Nile, and when the pharaoh’s daughter picked him up, she cleverly arranged for their own mother to be Moshe’s wet nurse.3 Right after the crossing of the Reed Sea, Miriam led the Israelite women in a dance and song celebrating God’s victory.4 And shortly before the Israelites reach the southern border of Canaan, Miriam uttered a single protest and God punished her with skin disease; the Israelites refused to move on until she had recovered.5

These three glimpses are more than any other woman gets in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. We learn that Miriam was smart and brave, she supported Moshe in giving credit to God, and she was beloved. She may have held such a central and symbolic place in the lives of the people that her death made them feel not just bereft, but panicked.

Divine instructions

Then Moshe and Aharon came away from the presence of the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Appointment, and they flung themselves on their faces. And the glory of God was seen by them. And God spoke to Moshe, saying: “Take the staff and assemble the community, you and your brother Aharon. And you [plural] must speak to the crag before their eyes. Then it will give its water, and you will bring out water for them from the boulder; and you will provide water for the community and their cattle.” (Numbers 20:6-8)

Why does God tell Moshe and Aharon to take the staff, but speak to the rocky outcrop?

Hirsch wrote that since the people are blaming Moshe for the campsite, God tells him to take the staff “to show them that you are still My emissary, and that you have never, not even for one moment, ceased to be in My service. … Rather, the people should be made to understand that it was not Moshe and Aharon but God Who had brought them to this place, and … their stormy agitation, which was meant to provoke God’s intervention, was unnecessary. Rather, the required water was already provided by God at the place to which He had directed them. One word from Moshe and Aharon to the rock would suffice for it to yield its water … they could be certain of receiving the right help at the right time—even without Moshe’s staff.”6

Doing the wrong thing

And Moshe took the staff from in front of the presence of God, as [God] had commanded him. (Numbers 20:9)

This is the same staff with which Moshe struck the rock at Choreiv. In last week’s Torah portion God made it bloom miraculously. (See my post Korach: Quelling Rebellion, Part 2.) It has been kept inside the Tent of Meeting, in front of the ark, since then.7 The text is silent on whether the staff still bears almond flowers, leaves, and almonds.

And Moshe and Aharon assembled the assembly facing the crag. And he said to them: “Listen up, you rebels! Should we bring out water for you from this crag?” (Numbers 20:10)

It sounds as if Moshe is claiming that he and Aharon have the power to make water emerge from rock. But Ramban wrote that Moshe means: “Do we have the power by natural means to bring you forth water out of this flint? You should therefore recognize that this is all from God.”8

And Moses raised his hand and struck the crag with the staff twice … And abundant water went out, and the community and their cattle drank. (Numbers 20:11)

Why does Moshe strike the crag instead of following God’s instruction to speak to it?

Rashbam wrote that he merely misunderstands God’s instruction. “He thought that speaking to a rock, i.e. communicating one’s thoughts to it, consisted of striking the rock.”9

Hirsch attributed Moshe’s lapse to being overwhelmed by the bitterness of failure. “Thus he again stood before the people—after nearly forty years—with the staff of God in his hand. … And now it hurt him to think that after all he had done during those forty years, he had not yet won the trust and confidence of his people. In the bitterness of these emotions he forgot what he had been commanded to do …”10

I think that Moshe is overwhelmed not by bitterness, but by grief. The death of Miriam, his wise older sister who had helped him by leading the women ever since the Israelites left Egypt, would affect him even more than it affected the rest of the Israelites. He hits the crag because he cannot think straight. And his brother Aharon, also grieving, is silent.

The punishment

Even though Moshe strikes the crag with the staff, water gushes out as if he had followed God’s instructions.

… and abundant water went out, and the community and their cattle drank. But God said to Moshe and to Aharon: “Since you[plural] did not trust in me, lehakdisheini in the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you [plural] will not bring this assembly into the land that I have given to them!” (Numbers 20:11-12)

lehakdisheini (לְהַקְדִּשֵׁנִי) = to consecrate me, to set me apart as holy. (A form of the verb kadeish—which is also the name of place where they are camping.)

Moshe spoke to the people, and hit the rocky crag. Aharon stood by silently. Neither of them spoke to the crag. Since both men failed to follow God’s orders, God punishes them both by decreeing that they will never set foot in the land of Canaan.

The worst crime

At least that is one explanation for God’s punishment. But their lapse seems like a peccadillo, not serious enough to warrant being shut out from achieving the goal they have spent the last four decades laboring for.

Rashbam explained: “God employs more stringent rules in dealing with the righteous such as Moses than He applies to ordinary mortals.”11

The reason, according to Rambam, is that a righteous man such as Moshe “was the model of good conduct for all the people, who aspired to find their worldly and other-worldly happiness in emulating him.”12

The specific way that Moshe failed to be a good role model, Rambam wrote, was by venting his own anger in public. “They would imagine the Deity was a cruel, forbidding God, and not the Compassionate Father of all, hastening to quench the thirst of His people.”13 This theory also explains why God lets water flow out of the crag despite Moshe’s actions and Aharon’s inaction.

On the other hand, the divine punishment might be for a worse crime. The reason that God gives for the punishment is Moshe and Aharon they did not consecrate God—they did not set God apart as holy in the eyes of the Israelites.

According to Chananel, “The sin consisted in their saying: ‘Are we to extract water for you from this rock?’ They should have said instead: ‘God will extract water for you.’”14

This would have set God apart as the miracle-maker; only God could bring water out of rock.

According to Tur Ha Arokh: “Some say that Moses’ sin consisted in his expressing himself unclearly, due to his anger, so that when he said: ‘Can we extract water from the rock?’ at least some of the people thought he had included God in this question, leaving doubt that even God could perform such a miracle.”15

Yet the episode in this week’s Torah portion concludes:

These were the waters of quarreling, where the Israelites quarreled with God, vayikadeish through them. (Numbers 20:13)

vayikadeish (וַיִּקָּדֵשׁ) = and he was consecrated, sanctified, set apart as holy.  (Another conjugation of kadeish.)

At the beginning of the story of the rocky crag that was not spoken to, the Torah says: And the people quarreled with Moshe … (Numbers 20:3). They blame Moshe for bringing them to a campsite with no water. At the end, the Torah says: … the Israelites quarreled with God. Perhaps just seeing the water flowing out of the crag is enough to make them realize that God had already prepared the miracle of water inside the crag. Therefore it was God who brought them to the campsite, so their quarrel had actually been with God.

With this realization they set apart God as holy. And God’s objective was achieved after all, even though Moshe hit the crag with the staff.

Maybe the moral of the story is: Do not be too quick to blame a human being for what looks like a bad situation. The one you want to blame might, like Moshe, not be the one responsible. And a situation that seems like a disaster, like the apparent absence of drinking water at Kadeish, might turn out to be a blessing underneath the surface.

  1. Kadeish is the hifilstem of the verb kadash, קָדַשׁ = consecrate, treat has holy.
  2. In Numbers 13:23 the scouts return with grapes, pomegranates, and figs.
  3. Exodus 2:3-9.
  4. Exodus 15:20.
  5. Numbers 12:15.
  6. 19th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Bemidbar, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2007, pp. 447-448.
  7. See Abraham ibn Ezra, 12th century commentary to Numbers 20:9.
  8. Ramban (13th-century rabbi Moshe ben Nachman), translation in www.sefaria.org.
  9. Rashbam  (12th- century rabbi Shmuel ben Meir), translation in www.sefaria.org.
  10. Hirsch, ibid., p. 449.
  11. Rashbam, ibid.
  12. Rambam (12th century rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, a.k.a. Maimonides), translation by Daniel Haberman in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar/Numbers, World Zionist Organization, 1980, p. 239.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Chananel ben Chushiel, ca. 1000 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
  15. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, Tur HaArokh (14th century), translated by Eliyahu Munk, in www.sefaria.org.

Hafatarat Korach—1 Samuel: Who Runs the Country?

Each Israelite town in the Hebrew Bible is self-governing up to a point. Its elders make decisions as a town council, and the judges (shoftim, שֺׁפְטִים) among the elders decide lawsuits. But sometimes the elders need a leader who coordinates the men of several towns.

Three different forms of government exercise authority over the town elders during the course of the first book of Samuel. At first, the high priest is also the chief judge of the land. Then the prophet Shmu-eil (“Samuel” in English) becomes the judge. And in this week’s haftarah reading from the Prophets, 1 Samuel 11:14-12:22, the job of governing goes to the first king of the Israelites, Sha-ul (“Saul” in English).

From priest to prophet

The last high priest and judge in the tent-temple at Shiloh is Eili (“Eli” in English), who dies at age 98 when he hears that the Philistines have won another big battle with the Israelites, and captured the ark, which Eili’s sons had brought all the way to the battlefield.

And he himself, shafat Israel 40 years. (1 Samuel 4:18)

shafat (שָׁפַט) = he had judged, he had governed.

Shiloh ceases to be the seat of government for the Israelites, and Eili’s protégé, the prophet Shmu-eil (“Samuel”), returns to his birthplace, Ramah. The conflict between the Philistines and the Israelites drags on for another twenty years. Then the Israelites start longing for the support of their own god. The prophet tells them to turn away from foreign gods and worship only Y-H-V-H. Only then, he says, God will rescue them from the Philistines. Next he summons “all Israel” to Mitzpah, where he leads the people in a purification and dedication ceremony.1

And the Philistines heard that the Israelites were gathered together at Mitzpah, and the Philistine rulers went up toward Israel. And the Israelites heard, and they became afraid in the face of the Philistines. Then the Israelites said to Shmu-eil: “Don’t you be silent, on account of us, from crying out to Y-H-V-H, our God, so [God] will save us from the hand of the Philistines!” (1 Samuel 7:7-8)

At this point, a judge who was a war leader would organize the men for battle. But Shmu-eil is a prophet. He offers up a lamb, cries out to God, and is answered.

… And God thundered in a loud voice that day against the Philistines, and he panicked them. And they were struck down before Israel. (1 Samuel 7:9)

The Israelites pursue their enemies, and reclaim the Israelite towns that the Philistines had captured earlier. For many years there is peace between the Israelites and the Philistines.

Vayishpot, Shmu-eil, the Israelites all the days of his life. And he went year after year and made the rounds of Bethel and Gilgal and Mitzpah, and shafat Israel in all these places. And he returned to Ramah, since his house was there, and shafat Israel there, and he built an altar there for God. (1 Samuel 7:15-7:17)

vayishpot (וַיִּשְׁפֺּט) = and he judged, and he governed. (From the verb shafat.)

Demand for a king

In his old age, Shmu-eil makes his two sons shoftim in Beersheba, about 50 miles south of his own home in Ramah. Perhaps he hopes they will grow into the job there, so they can replace him when he dies or retires.ִ

But his sons did not walk in his ways; they turned aside after profit, and they took bribes and turned aside from justice. Then all the elders of Israel assembled and came to Shmu-eil at Ramah. And they said to him: “Hey! You have grown old, and your sons have not walked in your ways. Now set up a king for us, leshafteinu like all the nations!” (1 Samuel 8:3-5)

leshafteinu (לְשָׁפְטֵנוּ) = to govern us, to judge us. (A form of the verb shafat.)

Although the elders of Israel are making a demand, Alter pointed out: “The entire people becomes subservient to Samuel, and they feel that only through the initiative of the prophet (however grudging) can they get the king they want.”2

The elders could have asked Shmu-eil to appoint a new chief judge. Instead, they ask for a king. In the Hebrew Bible, a king not only governs and judges the whole country, but is also the man in charge of foreign policy, both war and peace.

Shmu-eil warns them that a king will take away their children and their land to enlarge his government and pursue war. (See my post Haftarat Korach—1 Samuel: No Kings?) But they do not care that a king would control their lives far more than a circuit court judge. They have an underlying agenda.

 But the people refused to listen to Shmu-eil’s voice; and they said: “No! Rather, let there be a king over us! Then we will be, even we, like all the nations! Let our king govern us, and go out before us and fight battles for us!” (Numbers 8:19-20)

The elders want a permanent war leader. And God tells Shmu-eil to go ahead and give the people a king.

The prophet chooses a tall, handsome, clueless young man named Sha-ul (“Saul” in English), and God confirms the choice when lots are drawn at a meeting in Mitzpah. Then Sha-ul goes back home to work on his father’s farm.

Soon after that Nachash, the king of Ammon, threatens the Israelite town of Yaveish, and refuses to accept their surrender unless every man of Yaveish has his right eye gouged out by the end of seven days. The elders of Yaveish send a message to Sha-ul, who rallies the men from all the towns in the area and leads a successful battle against the Ammonite army.3

This week’s haftarah begins right after Sha-ul’s victory.

Then Shemu-eil said to the people: “Come, let us go to Gilgal, and we will inaugurate the kingship there!” And all the people went to Gilgal, and made Shmu-eil king there, in front of God at Gilgal. And they slaughtered thanksgiving offerings there in front of God, and Sha-ul and all the men of Israel rejoiced very much. (1 Samuel 11:14-15)

Ad hoc war leaders

But Shmu-eil is not ready to retire. He makes a speech, asking if he has defrauded, oppressed, or stolen from anyone during his years as the region’s judge and governor. They all shout that he has not. Then, even though Sha-ul has been officially coronated, Shmu-eil argues that the Israelites do not really need a permanent war leader.

He reminds them that whenever the Israelites worshiped other gods, their own God punished them by sending attackers from neighboring countries. When the Israelites admitted their guilt and begged God to rescue them, Shmu-eil says:

Gideon and his 300, Bible Card by Providence Lithograph Co. 1907, cropped

“Then God sent Yerubaal and Bedan, and Yiftach, and Shmueil, and rescued you from the hand of your enemies all around, and you dwelt in security.” (1 Samuel 12:11)

In other words, whenever the Israelites need a war leader, God sends them one until the threat is over.

Who are the four war leaders Shmu-eil cites?

Yerubaal (יְרֻבַּעַל) is the name the Israelites give Gideon after he destroys his father’s altar for Ba-al and builds a new altar for the God of Israel.4 When soldiers from Midian, Amalek, and Kedem march into the valley of Jezreel, Gideon/Yerubaal rallies the four Israelite tribes in the region and leads their combined forces in an attack that sends the enemies running. After he has led several other successful military actions, the Israelites ask him to rule over them and start a dynasty, but he refuses to become a king, saying “God will rule over you.” (Judges 8:23)

Samson Slays 1,000 with the Jawbone of an Ass, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Bedan (בְּדָן), according to the Talmud,5 is Shimshon (“Samson” in English), who belongs to the tribe of Dan. The book of Judges describes his single-handed defeat of groups of Philistines, and says: “Vayishpot Israel in the days of the Philistines for twenty years.” (Judges 15:20)

Shimshon is not exactly a war leader, since he fights alone, and it is hard to imagine such an impulsive strongman as a judge. But he is an ad-hoc leader who does not start a dynasty.

Yiftach (יִפְתָּח) heads a band of outlaws when the Ammonites start a war on Gilead, the Israelite territory east of the Jordan River. The elders of Gilead choose him as their war leader because of his fighting skills.6 Yiftach acts as both a diplomat and a general, defeats the Ammonites, then defends Gilead from Efrayim, the Israelite territory west of the river. He governs Gilead for six years, until he dies.

And Shmu-eil? He is the very man who is making the speech to the Israelites! The prophet is not a war leader, but his prayer to God at Mitzpah did result in God terrifying the Philistines with thunder, which resulted in a major victory for the Israelites.

A permanent war leader

After Shmu-eil points out that God rescued the Israelites through four men who were not kings—Yerubaal, Bedan, Yiftach, and himself—he says:

“Then you saw that Nachash, king of the Ammonites, was coming against you, and you said to me: ‘No, we must have a king reigning over us’. But Y-H-V-H, your God, is your king!” (1 Samuel 12:12)

The implication is that the Israelites should have prayed to God to rescue them by sending a temporary war leader, instead of asking for a king.

“And now, here! The king that you have chosen, that she-eltem! And here, God has set a king over you!” (1 Samuel 12:13)

she-eltem (שְׁאֶלְתֶּם) = you asked for. (A word play on the new king’s name, Sha-ul, שָׁאוּל = asked for.

Does Shmu-eil then turn over his leadership duties to the new king, retaining only his position as a prophet? No.

“Even now, stand by and see this great thing that GOD will do before your eyes! Isn’t it the time of the wheat harvest? I will call out to God, who will deliver thunder and rain. Then you will know and see your great wickedness that you did in the eyes of God, lishol for a king for yourselves!” And Shmu-eil called out to God, and God delivered thunder and rain that day, and the people felt great awe for God and Shmu-eil. (1 Samuel 12:16-18)

lishol (לִשְׁוֹל) = to ask. (Another word play on the name Sha-ul.)

Rain normally did not fall there in the summer, the time of the wheat harvest. Shmu-eil is showing off by saying he can get God to make it rain. The rainstorm proves that even if Shmu-eil is only a prophet now, he is a prophet with a lot of power.

His claim that God considers the Israelites’ request for a king wicked is a stretch, since God told Shmu-eil to find them a king. But God does not react to the prophet’s claim.

And all the people said to Shmu-eil: “Pray to Y-H-V-H, your God, on behalf of your servants, and we will not die because we added to our guilts the wickedness of asking for a king for ourselves!” (1 Samuel 12:19)

Now that he has the Israelites in the right frame of mind, Shmu-eil tells them that God will not abandon them.

“Also I—far be it from me to miss the mark before God by refraining from praying on your behalf! And I will instruct you in the way of the good and the upright.” (1 Samuel 12:23)

According to Steinsaltz, Shmu-eil means: “Although you have a king, I will remain your spiritual guide.”7

Even if King Sha-ul does mature enough to start judging lawsuits as well as leading wars, Shmu-eil will remain the religious leader of the Israelites.

We can understand the value of self-governance at the town level, especially if the town council consists of wise and trusted elders. (Alas, in too many American towns today the council is packed with real estate developers.) But the other forms of governance in the two books of Samuel are harder to grasp. Shouldn’t the judge who rules on whether an act is legal be different from the governor who order the act? If a high priest or a prophet is the governor, is the country a theocracy—and is this good? What are ad-hoc war leaders, and what prevents them from becoming dictators?

Is a king like the head of state in a modern country? What if the head of state wields unchecked power, and initiates unnecessary wars?

  1. 1 Samuel 7:2-6.
  2. Robert Alter, Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2013, p. 229.
  3. 1 Samuel 11:1-13.
  4. Judges 6:32.
  5. Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 25a.
  6. Judges 11:4-11.
  7. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, the steinsaltz Nevi’im, Koren Publishers, 2019, reprinted in www.sefaria.org.

Shelach-Lekha: Too Late

The Israelites are camped at the oasis of Kadeish-Barnea in this week’s Torah portion, Shelach-Lekha (Numbers/Bemidbar 13:1-15:41). Just over the ridge is the region called Canaan. If they go any farther north, they will have to begin the conquest of the land.

Sending out scouts is standard military procedure before an invasion. This week’s Torah portion opens:

Then God spoke to Moshe, saying: “Send men for yourself, and have them scout out the land of Canaan, which I myself am giving to the Israelites. One man from each tribe of their fathers you will send, every one a leader among them.” Numbers 13:1-2)

Moshe (“Moses” in English) picks a scout from each of the twelve non-Levite tribes—the tribes whose men will be going to battle while the Levite men guard God’s Tent of Meeting. He instructs them to check out the people, the towns, and the fertility of the land, and concludes by asking them to bring back some fruit. The twelve scouts go north through the Negev Desert and into the hill country around Hebron, and return forty days later.

Israel stamp, 1954

And they gave an account to him, and they said: “We came to the land to which you sent us, and indeed, it is flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” (Numbers 13:27)

They exhibit a gigantic bunch of grapes, as well as pomegranates and figs.1 Then ten of the twelve scouts deliver bad news.

“However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified, very big! And also we saw there the descendants of Anak! … We are not able to go up against the population, because it is stronger than we! … and all the people that we saw in its midst are men of size, and we saw giants there! The Anakites are from the giants. We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and thus were we in their eyes!” (Numbers 13:28, 31-33)

Rebellion

That night the Israelites weep and moan:

“If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or in this wilderness! If only we had died! Why is God bringing us to this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become booty! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?” And they said, each man to his brother: “Let us appoint a head, and we will return to Egypt!” (Numbers 14:2-4)

Moshe and Aharon (“Aaron” in English) fall on their faces, a submissive gesture; they are pleading either for God to rescue them or for the Israelite mob to remember them. (See my post Korach: Face Down.) Two of the scouts, Kaleiv (“Caleb” in English) and Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) tear their clothing, a gesture of mourning. Then the two scouts announce:

“If God is pleased with us, then [God] will bring us to this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. However, do not rebel against God! And don’t you fear the people of the land, because … God is with us!” (Numbers 14:8-9)

But the Israelites threaten to stone Kaleiv and Yehoshua. Then everyone sees God appear as a cloud over the Tent of Meeting.

And God said to Moshe: “How long will this people spurn me? How long will they not trust in me, despite all the signs that I have made among them? I will strike with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you a nation greater and more populous than they!” (Numbers 14:11-12)

Lack of trust

“God is with us!” Kaleiv said, but the Israelites do not believe it. It is true that they do not trust God. Rabbi Chayim ibn Attar wrote: “The people did not even have faith in God after all the miracles He had performed on their behalf.”2 But I think that the Israelites do not doubt God’s power to make their conquest successful.

Kaleiv and Yehoshua prefaced their claim that God would give them Canaan with the clause “If God is pleased with us”. Often during the journey from Egypt to the southern border of Canaan, God was not pleased with the Israelites, and twice God sent plagues to wipe out large numbers of them.3

What the Israelites actually doubt is God’s commitment to them.

Moshe persuades God to refrain from simply annihilating everybody on the spot, as he done when the Israelites were worshiping the golden calf. Then God compromises by decreeing that the Israelites must wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all the men over 20 have died—except for Kaleiv and Yehoshua, who in reward for their faithfulness will live long enough to enter Canaan. Men under 20 are presumed innocent, so they can enter the land as adults at the end of the 40 years.

The new order from God is:

“Tomorrow, turn and set out into the wilderness by the Reed Sea road.” (Numbers 14:25)

Ironically, God is giving the Israelites what they said they wanted the night before, when they wailed: “If only we had died in … this wilderness!” Now they will indeed die in the wilderness, mostly by natural causes. However, God kills the ten scouts who gave a bad report about Canaan immediately.

Nevertheless, when Moshe tells the people that they must stay in the wilderness for 40 years, they are not pleased.

Attempted reversal

Moshe spoke these words to all the Israelites, and the people mourned very much. They got up early in the morning and they went up to the top of the ridge, saying: “Here we are! And we will go up to the place that God said, because we did wrong!” (Numbers 14:39-40)

Child in a Tantrum, by Rembrandt, ca. 1635

The Israelite men are like small children who scream and cry every time they are told to do something they do not want to do—and then when they find out there will be a serious punishment for disobeying, they beg to reverse time and erase their misbehavior. If only they had known that this was the consequence, they would never have done it!

But sometimes actions have consequences that cannot be erased. In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelite men have demonstrated that they are not the kind of people who can be trusted to follow orders from a legitimate superior—in this case, God. Therefore they are not the kind of people who can serve as troops in the conquest of a country.

And Moshe said: “Why are you going beyond the word of God? That will not succeed! Do not go up, because God is not in your midst, and you will be defeated in the face of your enemies! For the Amalekite and the Canaanite are there in front of you, and you will fall by the sword; since you turned away from following God, then God will not be with you.”  (Numbers 14:41-43)

Like small children, the Israelite men do not really listen to Moshe. Before they rejected God’s project of conquering Canaan, Kaleiv (“Caleb”) reminded them “God is with us!” Now that God has decreed a different fate for them, Moshe says: “Do not go up, because God is not in your midst!” God is no longer with them.

As Abraham ibn Ezra wrote, “The violation of God’s command cannot prosper.”4

When the Israelites agreed “Let us appoint a head, and we will return to Egypt!” they violated God’s long-standing directive: to follow Moshe to Canaan and take over that land. All of God’s miracles that freed them from Egypt and brought them to the border of Canaan would be wasted if they slunk back to Egypt now. So God decreed that the conquest of Canaan would be achieved by the next generation. Now, when the people decide to march into Canaan after all, they are violating God’s new command to turn away from the border and heard into the wilderness.

But they were heedless and went up toward the top of the ridge. But the ark of the covenant of God, and Moses, did not budge from the middle of the camp. Then the Amalekite and the Canaanite, who were staying on that ridge, came south and beat and battered them up to the chormah. (Numbers 14:44-45)

chormah (חָרְמָה) = a place-name from the verb charam (חָרַם)= destroy utterly.

Not all the Israelite men are destroyed; many survive to die during the years of waiting in the wilderness. According to Steinsaltz, “They were routed in battle and retreated in humiliation.”5 But even the survivors may have felt destroyed psychologically.

I feel sorry for the men who admit they were wrong, and try to correct their mistake, only to be destroyed. Do they live in the emotional whirlwind of two-year-olds? Or are they merely stupid? How can they fail to realize that they will fail?

These men do know that they did something wrong, or God would not have sentenced them to die in the wilderness. They assume their misdeed was simply refusing to cross the ridge into the land of Canaan. It does not occur to them that deciding to abandon God and return to Egypt was a far more serious crime.

And the men do not listen to Moshe, even though he has spoken for God ever since he and God freed them from slavery in Egypt. Neither do they do not attach any meaning to the fact that Moshe and the ark remain in the camp with the women and children. Ignoring all evidence, the men who rush up the ridge actually believe that by doing what God ordered in the first place, they can change God’s mind and win a reprieve from spending the rest of their lives in the wilderness.

They are only human. I bet all human beings, at some point in their lives, realize that they have made a terrible mistake, and try to fix it by turning back the clock and doing it right this time. The problem is that we cannot turn back time. There are no second chances.

Similarly, someone who has lied or cheated on a spouse cannot turn back time and do it over again, getting it right this time. Once you have betrayed someone’s trust, the best you can do is to apologize and try to make amends. And even if the betrayed spouse forgives the betrayer, the marriage is not the same. A betrayal between friends, or between a parent and child, cannot be erased either, though a new relationship may be possible.

There are no second chances. But with humility and deep reflection, we can change our approach to life, and make better choices in the future.

And if we are lucky, we will see the next generation succeed where we failed.

  1. Numbers 13:23.
  2. Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  3. After the golden calf in Exodus 32:35; and after complaining about the manna in Numbers 11:4-35.
  4. Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, 12th century C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
  5. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Chumash, in www.sefaria.org.

Beha-alotkha: Riffraff

When the Israelites leave Egypt the morning after God’s final plague, the death of the firstborn, some non-Israelites join them. The Israelites are the ethnic group descended from Yaakov (“Jacob” in English), a.k.a. Yisrael (“Israel” in English). The people from other ethnic groups who join them are mentioned only three times in the Hebrew Bible: when they leave Egypt in Exodus, when there is a dispute about campsites in Leviticus, and when they approach the border of Canaan in this week’s Torah portion in Numbers, Beha-alotkha (Numbers/Bemidbar 8:1-12:15).

Slaves and proselytes

19th-century illustration, “Exodus of Israel”, 19th-century print.

And the children of Israel pulled out from Ramses toward Sukkot, about 600,000 adult men on foot, aside from non-marchers.  And also an eirev rav went up with them, and flocks and herds of very impressive property. (Exodus 12:37-38)

eirev rav (עֵרֶב רַב) = “mixed multitude”, motley crowd.  (eirev (עֵרֶב) = mixed, mingled+ rav (רַב) = numerous, abundant.)

The duplicative rev-rav sound indicates that eirev rav is a pejorative, like “riffraff” and “ragtag” in English. The Israelites looked down on the eirev rav, but let them come along.

Philo of Alexandria wrote that there were two kinds of people in the eirev rav: fellow slaves looking for a better life, and those who wanted to change their allegiance to the God of Israel after witnessing the plagues and recognizing God’s power.1

The term eirev rav is never used again in the Hebrew Bible, although the book of Nehemiah uses the word eirev by itself to indicate the Ammonites and Moabites who came with the Israelites who returned to Judah from Babylon, who were then rejected.2

Man with an Egyptian father

The rest of the book of Exodus reads as if only Israelites travel to Mount Sinai and camp there for over a year. The Israelite-only approach continues in the book of Leviticus until the story of the blasphemer, which begins:

The son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man went out among the children of Israel; and the son of the Israelite woman and an Israelite man quarreled concerning the camp. (Leviticus 24:10)

The subject of the quarrel is not specified. But one traditional suggestion is that man with the Egyptian father resents being forbidden to pitch his tent inside the Israelite camp, in the area reserved for Dan, his mother’s tribe. “Outside the camp” is also where people with the skin disease tza-arat live,3 and where dead bodies are taken.4 Since the half-Egyptian man curses God during his quarrel with the full-blooded Israelite, he is executed for blasphemy. (See my post Emor: Blasphemy.)

Anxious riffraff

People from other ethnic groups who accompany the Israelites on their journey to Canaan are mentioned a third and final time in this week’s Torah portion.

When everyone heads north from Mount Sinai, the Israelites are organized to begin the conquest of Canaan. Their fighting men have been counted, and God has told them the marching order of the tribes and where each tribe will camp.5 The Levites have been ordered to march in the center of the line, carrying the disassembled pieces of God’s sanctuary, to camp immediately surrounding the reassembled sanctuary, serving guard duty. This week’s Torah portion lists not only the marching order of the tribes, but the captain of each tribe.6

The eirev rav who joined the exodus from Egypt are not members of any Israelite tribe, so they are not mustered into the army. The Israelite tribes all have assigned campsites, but the non-Israelites have to pitch their tents outside the Israelite camp. The Torah does not say where they go when all the tribes line up to march in their assigned order, but they probably trail along in the rear.

Priests blow silver trumpets, 19th-century print

The priests blow two silver trumpets to signal when each Israelite tribe should fall into its place in the marching order. And God tells Moshe (“Moses” in English) to tell the Israelites:

“And when you enter into battle in your land against the attacker who attacks you, then the trumpets should blast, and you will be remembered before God, your God, and be delivered from your enemies.” (Numbers 10:9)

So the Israelites know that God is with them. But they also know that their men will be the troops on the ground, fighting battles as they take over Canaan. None of them were soldiers in Egypt. They have fought only one battle their whole lives, when the Amalekites attacked them on the way to Mount Sinai, and then they barely managed to drive the attackers away.7

Everyone marches north from Sinai for three days and camps in the wilderness of Paran, near the southern border of Canaan.8

And the people were like bad complainers in the ears of God. And God heard, and [God’s] nose heated up [with anger], and a fire of God burned against them and ate up the edge of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moshe, and Moshe interceded with God, and the fire sank down. (Numbers 11:1-2)

The Torah does not say who complains, or what they complain about. But everyone has been warned not to complain.

Yet the Israelites are in a state of anxiety about the approaching war. How do they deal with their anxiety? In my post Beha-alokha: Cold Feet, Dry Throat, I wrote that they long to return to Egypt, and they crave comfort food: the food they ate in Egypt.

What about the non-Israelites trailing along behind them? Since they are neither counted with the troops nor allowed to camp with the troops’ families, they probably figure that when the Israelites engage in battle with Canaanites, they will have to hide as best they can in a strange land. They can only hope that no Canaanites will find them and kill or enslave them. So they, too, would feel a lot of anxiety. They are desperate for a distraction to take their minds off the future.

Then the asafsuf who were among them lusted after a lust. And in turn the Israelites also wept. And they said: “Who will feed us basar?” (Numbers 11:4)

asafsuf (אֲסְפְּסֻף) = rabble, riffraff. (A reduplication of the verb aseif, אָסֵף = gather.)

basar (בָּשָׂר) = flesh; meat; human skin. (“All basar” = all living creatures. “My basar” = my blood relative.)

The duplicative saf-suf sound indicates that asafsuf is another pejorative. Like eirev rav, the word asafsuf appears only once in the Hebrew Bible. The 12th-century rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra gave his definitive opinion that asafsuf meant those “who were gathered unto the children of Israel but were not of Israelite stock. The asafsuf refers to the erev rav.”9 The asafsuf begin lusting first, longing for some sensual pleasure; the text does not say what kind. Then the Israelites join in.

What kind of flesh?

One tradition in the commentary is that the asafsuf lust for the kinds of sexual intercourse prohibited in Leviticus, mostly incest, and then the Israelites start lusting for incest as well. The Israelites ask “Who will feed us basar?” and then change the subject to the food of Egypt.

“We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt at no charge, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic! And now our throats are dry. There is nothing except for the manna before our eyes!” (Numbers 11:5-6)

Perhaps the Israelites cry “Who will feed us basar?” because that is what they hear the asafsuf wailing. After all, many of the Israelites own flocks and herds, and have the option of slaughtering one of their animals as an offering to God. In a thanksgiving offering, the fat parts of the animal are burned into smoke for God, but the priest, the donor, and the donor’s guests eat the roasted meat.

The asafsuf, living on the fringes of society, are not likely to be invited to a thanksgiving offering. The Israelites already get an occasional taste of roasted meat; what they long for is the fish and other foods they ate in Egypt.

After an explanation of manna, the story in this week’s Torah portion resumes with:

And Moshe heard the people weeping by their clans, each one at the entrance of his tent. And God’s nose got very hot [with anger], and it was bad in the eyes of Moshe. (Numbers 11:10)

Abraham ibn Ezra, the 12th-century linguist, wrote: “weeping, family by family. The families gathered together to cry, as they do when they mourn for the dead.”10

One emotional response to an imminent battle is to weep for those who may die before they are killed.

Yet the Talmud records a disagreement between two sages about whether “fish” is literal, or a euphemism for incest.11 In Midrash Tanchuma, written in the 6th to 8th centuries C.E., Rabbi Shimon makes an elaborate argument that “Who will feed us basar?” really means “that they desired to permit illicit intercourse for themselves; and so it says (in Numbers 11:10), ‘Now Moses heard the people weeping for their families.’”12

To me it seems highly unlikely that the men are weeping because they lust for sex with family members other than their wives.

Yet the interpretation that the Israelites, like the non-Israelites with them, were lusting after incest appears again in Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno’s 16th-century commentary. And in the 17th century, Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Luntschitz wrote:

“The repetition of the phrase lusted a lust reflects the nature of sexual immorality, where desire leads to more desire … And they said with a full mouth, Who will feed us meat? — referring to the “flesh” of immorality, using a euphemistic expression … And it is plausible to understand that this is all quite literal, but their intention was to request meat which heats the body more and increases sexual desire. This is the meaning of the double expression they craved a craving — they craved something that would increase sexual desire.”13

Even rabbis writing Torah commentary could not resist the temptation to talk about forbidden sex. But whatever the asafsuf and the Israelites are lusting for, I doubt it is as transgressive as incest. In times of great stress, most people want to be distracted by something that is absorbing or exciting, but also familiar. It is not the time to take a risk on a completely new activity, whether the activity is attempting incest or attempting to eat an animal you have never seen before.

So the asafsuf lust for either more sex or more meat, and the Israelites lust for the foods they ate in Egypt.

I remember the anxiety of my generation during the Vietnam War. Now many adult Americans fear the end of democracy and imposition of martial law in our own country. How do we live with our anxiety?

Sometimes we get together and complain, remembering the good old days, weeping that our own political party is not helping us. Some of us distract ourselves by writing letters to politicians and holding signs in protests. Some of us distract ourselves with electronic entertainment. And some of us indulge in sensual pleasure, reaching for our comfort foods or other soothing pleasures.

And what about our own asafsuf, the people in the United States who are excluded from the closed circle of the camp, the “outsiders” who suffer first in many a war or dictatorship? Do they even dare to weep in public?

  1. Philo of Alexandria (circa 30 B.C.E.-50 C.E.), De Vita Mosis; cited in Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah, translated by E.S. Mazer, Mesorah Publications, 1994, pp. 147-148.
  2. Nehemiah 13:3. See my post Bo: Minglers or Riffraff?
  3. Leviticus 13:45-46.
  4. Leviticus 10:4-5.
  5. Numbers 1:1-2:34.
  6. Numbers 10:13-28.
  7. Exodus 17:8-13.
  8. Numbers 10:12.
  9. Abraham ibn Ezra, 12th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Talmud Bavli, Yoma 75a.
  12. Midrash Tanchuma, c.500 – c.800 CE, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  13. Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Luntschitz, Kli Yakar, 17th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.

2 Samuel & 1 Chronicles: Counting Men, Part 2

(If you would like to read about this week’s Torah portion, Naso, you might try Naso: Divine Verdict or Naso: Raising a Blessing or Naso: Distanced by Hair. This post is part 2 of my recent post Bemidbar, Ki Tisa, & Pinchas: Counting Men, Part 1.)

The first three times God orders a census of Israelite men in the Hebrew Bible, there is a reasonable reason. The fourth time, the God character seems irrational.

The first census, in the portion Ki Tisa in Exodus, takes place when the Israelites are donating materials to construct the new sanctuary. Every man age 20 and up is counted and required to give a half-shekel of silver to the project, regardless of his wealth, tribe, or standing. (Women and children are not included because they do not own anything in their own right.) The God who orders this census may be considering the psychology of the Israelite men, who learn that every man counts in the new centralized religion.1

Army of the Twelve Tribes, by Jan Luyken, ca. 1700

The second census, in the portion Bemidbar in Numbers, counts all Israelite men age 20 and up excepts the Levites, who will serve as religious functionaries. The rest of the men are mustered for military service, now that the people are about to march north and conquer Canaan. Although God promises to make the conquest easy, an army is still necessary for operations on the ground. This census is ordered by a practical God.2

The third census, in the portion Pinchas in Numbers, is even more practical than the second one. The Israelites have spent 40 years in the wilderness because they refused to enter Canaan the first time. Now they are preparing to cross the Jordan River and do the job, so God orders a census that will provide information for both military campaigns and the allotment of land once Canaan is vanquished.3

But the fourth and final time God orders a census, the purpose is not clear.

A pretext and a satan

The Israelites occupy most of Canaan in the two books of Samuel, but they fight war after war with neighboring countries. David is the king of all Israel and Judah for 33 years,4 and he is responsible for these recurrent wars. His men do battle with the Philistine city-states to the west and the kingdom of Ammon to the northeast, and also fight in a civil war between King David and his son Avshalom (“Absalom” in English). David’s men always win.

The second book of Samuel ends with miscellany from late in King David’s reign: the final psalm David writes,5 some lists of his chief warriors and their exploits,6 and a curious story about a census and a threshing-floor., which begins:

And again God’s anger burned against Israel, and [God] incited David against them, saying: “Go, number Israel and Judah!” (2 Samuel 24:1)

No reason is given for God’s anger. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz speculated that God’s anger is a delayed reaction to “the twenty thousand casualties of the war that took place in the wake of Avshalom’s rebellion.”7

Robert Alter suggested:

“Perhaps, indeed, there is no discernible reason for God’s fury against Israel. The God of this story has the look of acting arbitrarily, exacting terrible human costs in order to be placated. Unlike the deity of 1 Samuel-2 Samuel 20, He is decidedly an interventionist God, pulling the human actors by strings, and He may well be a capricious God, here ‘inciting’ David to carry out a census that will only bring grief to the people.”8

The first book of Chronicles retells the story of King David’s unfortunate census, and begins with a satan instead of an angry God.

Then a satan stood against Israel, and incited David to number Israel. (1 Chronicles 21:1)

satan (שָׂטָן) = accuser, adversary.

A satan is sometimes a human adversary in the Hebrew Bible.9 But the bible also uses the word satan to describe divine adversaries. When God is angry at Bilam’s decision to go to Moab and try to curse the Israelites, God sends a divine messenger who stands in the middle of the road as a satan.10

The book of Job begins by describing Iyov (“Job” in English) as a virtuous man who reveres God. Next the “sons of God”, including the satan, present themselves to the God called Y-H-V-H. (The “sons of God” are either remnants from an ancient Canaanite myth, or borrowed from the Persian idea that the creator god made divine entities called sons and daughters. Job was written after Judea became part of the Persian Empire.) When God calls Iyov (Job) the most upright and God-fearing man on earth, the satan tempts God into testing this man.11 The satan in this story seems to have been created by God in order to be an inner adversary, an aspect of an anthropomorphic God that questions God’s initial assumptions.

Perhaps God is also tempted by the satan in God’s own personality when God incites King David to conduct a useless census. Things are going too well for King David; he always wins. And the Israelite men might suddenly seem smug to the God character. Don’t they realize that God is responsible for all their victories?

David’s mistake

King David, however, does not know that God, or God’s satan, is looking for an excuse to kill some Israelite men. He just hears God say:

“Go, number Israel and Judah!” Then the king said to Yoav, commander of the army that was with him: “Please go to and fro among all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and count the people; then I will know the number of the people.”  (2 Samuel 24:1-2)

David believes God wants him to count how many men can be mustered for war. His army commander questions whether this census is necessary, but then he follows instructions, spending more than nine months touring the combined kingdom with his army officers.

But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people, and David said to God: “What I did was very wrong! And now, God, please overlook the iniquity of your servant, for I have been very foolish.” (2 Samuel 24:9-10)

What did David do wrong?

The traditional answer, which appears in the Talmud,12 is that David should have taken a half-shekel of silver from each man counted, as in the census that God ordered in the book of Exodus. The silver would be their “ransom” for their lives, and would be used by the Levites. This answer responds to a superstitious fear of being counted.

However, when God ordered the second and third censuses of Israelite men, the ones mustering men for the military, God did not ask each man to give a half-shekel. So I would argue that the half-shekel donation was not a general rule for censuses.

Ralbag wrote in the 14th century that David’s mistake was that he “placed his trust … upon his [having] many people. And it was not fitting that he should place his faith in many people … but rather only in God. For there is nothing that prevents Him from saving through the many or the few…”13

According to Steinsaltz, King David is thinking: “I have acted foolishly by taking an unnecessary census, which was merely an expression of pretension.”14

But I wonder if David’s mistake was that after he heard (or felt) God say “Go, number Israel and Judah!” he did not ask God a follow-up question. David is not a prophet, and never has a direct conversation with God.15 But three times while David is leading an outlaw band, he asks Evyatar, the priest who joined his band, to use a divining device called an eifod to learn God’ answers to David’s questions.16 After David has become the king of Israel and Judah, God speaks to the prophet Natan, who then speaks to King David.17

But David does not check with a priest or a prophet about his impression that God told him to take a census of Israel and Judah. He just sends out his army commander to go out and count all the men who can draw a sword.

If David had first asked a priest or prophet whether God really wanted a census and what it was for, what would God have answered? Was this version of the God character crabby enough to tell the truth: that the census was an excuse to kill some Israelites? Or would these questions have startled God into giving the situation more thought, leading to a change of heart?

David’s choice

After David prays to God to forgive him for counting the men, God speaks to the king’s seer, a type of lesser prophet, named Gad:

King David in the Presence of the Prophet Gad, by Luca Giordano, 17th c.

“Go and tell David: Thus said God: ‘Three things I have taken against you. Choose one of them, and I will do it to you.’” Then Gad came to David and told him, and said to him: “Shall a seven-year famine come upon you in the land? Or shall you flee from your foes for three months as they pursue you? Or shall there be three days of pestilence in your land? Now consider and perceive what word I will take back to the one who sent me.” (2 Samuel 24:11-12)

All three options give the God character in this story an excuse to kill some Israelite men.

And David said to Gad: “I am in great straits! Let it fall, please, into the hand of God, because [God’s] compassion is great. Don’t let me fall into the hand of humankind.” (2 Samuel 24:13)

King David, who believes in a compassionate God, rejects the option of pursuit by merciless enemy soldiers. He also rejects the option of a seven-year famine. According to Steinsaltz, he thinks: “Seven years of famine is too harsh a punishment, and the degree of its severity is also dependent to a certain extent upon the capabilities and compassion of human beings.”18

That leaves three days of pestilence, in which the number of people who die depends entirely on God.

And God put a pestilence in Israel … and 70,000 of the people died, from Dan to Beersheba. And the messenger [of God] extended its hand to destroy Jerusalem, but God had a change of heart regarding the evil, and said to the messenger who was destroying the people: “Too much! Now drop your hand!” The messenger of God was then beside the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. (2 Samuel 24:15-16)

So the pestilence does not reach the City of David, the part of Jerusalem that David took from the Jebusites.

And Gad came to David that day and said to him: “Go up and set up an altar for God on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. (2 Samuel 24:17)

King David purchases the threshing-floor and Araunah’s oxen for fifty shekels, and burns offerings to God. Alter noted: “Although the temple is not explicitly mentioned, this acquisition of an altar site in Jerusalem is clearly placed here to prepare the way for the story of Solomon the temple builder that is to follow.”19

Two views of God

The God of the census in Exodus wants all Israelite men to be included in the project of building a place for God to dwell. The God of the two censuses in Numbers wants to provide practical information for the Israelite officers who will be organizing the conquest of Canaan. All three of these censuses are reasonable means for God to help the Israelites become a nation, a people invested in their religion and in the land they will eventually own.

But God orders the fourth census on a whim, in a fit of anger, and then uses King David’s obedient implementation as a pretext for killing thousands of Israelites. This capricious God creates a situation that uses David unfairly, delivers capital punishment without letting the victims know their crime, and fails as a deterrent for future crimes. The census in the second book of Samuel has no rational purpose. Literalists who consider God’s four censuses have to reconcile the rational and helpful God of the first three censuses with the irrational, petty, and careless God of the fourth census. The rest of us blame the scribe who wrote the fourth census story.

A census is not in itself a bad thing. But the purpose of a census can be helpful or harmful, even today. For example, counting people in voter registrations to determine redistricting can lead to fair representation, or to giving one political party an unfair advantage. In the United States, birth records can be used to determine when people are old enough to drive, to be drafted into the army, or to qualify for social security payments. In a country that scapegoats a subset of the population, information from various registrations can be used for unfair deportations, imprisonments, and even executions.

Whether a census will be used for good or bad purposes in the Hebrew Bible depends on a scribe’s view of God. Whether census information in our time is used for good or bad purposes depends on the government’s view of its own purpose.

  1. Bemidbar, Ki Tisa, & Pinchas: Counting Men, Part 1.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid.
  4. 2 Samuel 5:3-5.
  5. 2 Samuel 23:1-7.
  6. 2 Samuel 23:8-39.
  7. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Nevi’im, Koren Publishers, 2019, as reprinted in www.sefaria.org.
  8. Robert Alter, Ancient Israel, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2013, p. 581.
  9. In the story of David, humans are called adversaries of other humans in 1 Samuel 29:4 and 2 Samuel 19:23.
  10. Numbers 22:22, 22:32. Also see Zechariah 3:1-2, in which God’s messenger and “the” satan argue about the fate of a high priest.
  11. Job 1:6-12.
  12. Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 62b.
  13. Ralbag, acronym of 14th-century Rabbi Levi ben Gershon, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  14. Steinsaltz, ibid.
  15. In 2 Samuel 7:18-29 King David sits in front of the ark and delivers a speech to God, but God does not answer.
  16. 1 Samuel 23:1-6, 23:9-12, and 30:7-8.
  17. 2 Samuel 7:4-17 and 12:1-14.
  18. Steinsaltz, ibid.
  19. Alter, p. 585.

Shavuot & Ezekiel: Magnificent Presence

The holiday of Shavuot begins this Thursday evening, and most Jewish congregations will celebrate it by holding Torah study late into the night. But in the Hebrew Bible, Shavuot is a pilgrimage festival in which people bring offerings to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the wheat harvest.

A harvest pilgrimage

And you must make for yourselves the pilgrimage of Shavuot, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest … all your males must be seen in front of the lord, Y-H-V-H, the God of Israel. (Exodus 34:22-23)

shavuot (שָּבֻעֺת) = weeks.

Shavuot falls seven weeks after the second day of Pesach (“Passover” in English). Pesach began as the first pilgrimage festival of the agricultural year, marking the beginning of the barley harvest. By Shavuot, the barley harvest has finished and it is time to harvest the wheat grown over the winter.

Seven shavuot you will count for yourself; from the beginning of the sickle in the standing grain you will begin counting seven weeks. Then you will make a pilgrimage festival, Shavuot, for Y-H-V-H, your God. You will give according to the voluntary offering of your hand; as Y-H-V-H, your God, blesses you. (Deuteronomy 16:9-10)

Although the book of Deuteronomy prescribes a Shavuot gift to the temple of whatever a man can reasonably afford, the book of Leviticus lists the animals that each head of household should bring to the altar. Men are also required to bring bread made from the new wheat.

From your settlements you must bring bread as a wave-offering, two [loaves of] two tenth-measures of fine flour they will be. You will bake them leavened, as first fruits to Y-H-V-H. (Leviticus 23:17)

Since only unleavened grain products could be burned on the altar, the two loaves of leavened (sourdough) bread are for the priest to eat after he has lifted them up in honor of God.

Shavuot without the temple

After the Romans razed the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the rabbis recast the three pilgrimage festivals so that people could still observe them without the temple. The holiday of Pesach became a home observance in which people eat matzah and tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. (See my post Pesach: A History.) This was an easy move because the book of Exodus already combined a ban on leavened bread with instructions for the Israelites about to leave Egypt. The holiday of Sukkot became a home observance in which people eat inside huts with roofs of branches, and enact a ritual to pray for sufficient rain during the winter. This followed naturally from the books of Leviticus and Nehemiah, which described the people constructing huts out of branches when they made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to make offerings and celebrate the last harvest of the year.1

But Shavuot is only mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in terms of bringing gifts to the temple. So the rabbis prescribed a different celebration after the temple was destroyed. Since hints in the book of Exodus indicate that the Israelites reach Mount Sinai roughly seven weeks after they leave Egypt, it made sense to claim that God’s revelation at Sinai and the “Ten Commandments” happened on Shavuot. A 3rd-century sage, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat, is recorded in the Talmud as declaring that people should rejoice on Shavuot because that was “the day on which the Torah was given.” 2

If the Torah was given on Shavuot, why not spend the holiday studying Torah—especially the readings the rabbis assigned for that day?

The Torah reading for Shavuot became Exodus 19:1-20:23, which includes both the “Ten Commandments” and God’s mind-bending revelation at Mount Sinai. The accompanying haftarah reading from the prophets became Ezekiel 1:1-28 and 3:12, an account of the prophet’s own mind-bending vision of God. And since each of the pilgrimage festivals was matched with a book in the Ketuvim (“Writings”) section of the Hebrew Bible, the book to study on Shavuot became the book of Ruth, the story of a woman’s acceptance of the God of Israel.

Mount Sinai and Babylon

In the revelation at Mount Sinai, God manifests as fire and smoke on the mountain, and sounds of thunder and shofar blasts. The whole mountain trembles.3

And all the people were seeing the noises, and the torchlight, and sound of the shofar, and the mountain smoking. And the people saw, and they were shaken, and they stood at a distance. (Exodus 20:15)

Mount Sinai is called “the mountain of God” when Moshe (“Moses” in English) first meets God there at the burning bush.4 When the Israelites reach the mountain, they are terrified by God’s manifestation there. The following year, they create God’s portable tent-sanctuary at the foot of the mountain, and God manifests as cloud or fire above the tent at every campsite on the way to Canaan. When King Shlomoh (“Solomon” in English) builds a temple in Jerusalem, God manifests momentarily as a cloud inside it.5

But the prophet and priest Yechezkeil (“Ezekiel” in English) sees manifestations of God even in Babylon. While the Babylonian army was conquering Judah, it deported the city’s leading citizens to Babylon. Yechezkeil, who lives in a community of Israelite exiles in Babylon, anticipates that the Babylonians will soon take Jerusalem and destroy its temple (which they did in 587 B.C.E.). He also foresees that the Israelites will eventually return and build a new temple. But without the temple, how can anyone experience God? The prophet reports that on the bank of a canal in Babylon,

… the heavens opened and I saw visions of God. (Ezekiel 1:1)

And an explanatory note says:

… And it came upon him there: the hand of God. (Ezekiel 1:3)

At Mount Sinai the Israelites saw God as fire, smoke, flashing torchlight, and frightening sounds. Only the flashing fire is the same in Yechezkeil’s first vision.

I looked, and hey! A whirlwind came from the north, a huge cloud and flashing fire, and brightness all around it. And in the center of it, like an eyn of amber in the center of the fire. And in its center were also the likenesses of four living creatures.  And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a human. But each one had four faces, and each of them had four wings. And each one’s legs were like a single straight leg, and each one’s feet were like a single calf’s foot. And [their] radiance looked like polished bronze. (Ezekiel 1:4-7)

eyn (עֵין) = eye; fountain, spring.

Perhaps the center of the divine cloud reminds the prophet of an eye that sees everything going on. Or perhaps is like a fountain of amber sparks.

Yechezkeil (Ezekiel) does not know what to call the four bizarre creatures, but he knows that they are alive, and that although they have some human characteristics, they are not human beings. They have no knee joints because they never sit or lie down,6 and their legs and feet are notseparated because they move without walking. The manifestation of God at Mount Sinai was not accompanied by any attendant creatures, angelic or otherwise.

Faces and wheels

However, when the prophet Yesheyahu (“Isaiah” in English) has a vision of God in Jerusalem in the 8th century B.C.E., he sees God (not described) sitting on a throne, the skirts of God’s robe filling the temple, and serafim (שְׂרָפִים = burning ones) standing above in attendance. These are not the same creatures as Ezekiel’s, since each seraf has one face, two feet, and six wings, and uses two of the wings to fly. (See my post Haftarat Yitro—Isaiah: The Volunteer.)

Each of the heavenly attendants in the first vision in the book of Ezekiel has four faces, one foot, and four wings.

Human hands were under their wings on four sides. And their faces and their wings were on their four sides. Their wings were joined one to another. And they did not turn when they moved; when they moved, each could proceed in the direction of any of its faces. (Ezekiel 1:8-9)

Rashi clarified that the four faces were pointed in “the four directions of the world”: north, east, south, and west.7

And in front of them was the likeness of the face of a human. And the face of a lion was to the right for each of the four, and the face of a bull on the left for each of the four, and the face of an eagle for each of the four [in back]. (Ezekiel 1:10)

According to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, the eagle faces point north, the bull faces point west, the human faces south, and the lion faces east.8 Why those four animals? In Shemot Rabbah,

“Rabbi Avin said: Four types of exalted ones were created in the world: The most exalted of living creatures is man; the most exalted of birds is the eagle; the most exalted of domesticated animals is the ox; the most exalted of beasts is the lion. All of them received kingship, they were granted prominence, and they are fixed beneath the chariot of the Holy One blessed be He …”9

After emphasizing that the creatures moved without turning their bodies, Yechezkeil (Ezekiel) adds that something like the fire of torches is moving among the four creatures, and lightning goes out from the fire.10 Then he notices something else.

And I looked at the creatures, and hey! One wheel was on the ground beside each creature of four faces. (Ezekiel 1:15)

Although the vision begins in the center of a cloud, now it seems to have touched down to the ground. Each wheel gleams like a gem, and looks like two wheels cutting through one another to make four quarters. Like the creatures, the wheels can move in any of the four directions without turning.

Ezekiel’s Vision, by Hans Holbein the Younger, Zurich Bible, 1538

And their rims were tall and frightening; and the rims of all four were filled with eynayim, all around. (Ezekiel 1:18)

eynayim (עֵינַיִם) = pairs of eyes. (The duplex form of eyn.)

Steinsaltz explained: “The wheels were not merely implements for movement; rather, they were living beings with many eyes.”11

Visions in the Hebrew Bible are metaphorical, and the first vision in Ezekiel makes it clear that God and everything related to God is intently watching something—perhaps all humans on earth.

The wheels and the four-faced creatures move in tandem, Yechezkeil (Ezekiel) says. Some rabbis called the whole ensemble a merkavah, a chariot—perhaps because “Their wings were joined one to another” might mean the upper wings of one creature were fused to the upper wings of its neighbors, rather than merely touching them, as well as because of the synchronization of the living creatures and the wheels. The Merkavah school of mysticism, which began in the second century CE, focused on visions of God and God’s supernatural creatures, and the number four.

Then Yechezkeil (Ezekiel) tentatively describes what he saw above the four living creatures and their living wheels.

And the likeness over the head of the living creature: a vault like an eyn, awe-inspiring crystal spread out above their heads. … And above the vault like the appearance of sapphire that was over their heads was the shape of a throne, and on the appearance of the shape of a throne was a shape like the appearance of a human on it. (Ezekiel 1:22, 26)

Is the vault above the creatures’ heads like a vast crystalline eye, or like a vast crystalline spring of bubbling water? Either image is hard to comprehend.

Yechezkiel describes the “shape like the appearance of a human” as amber from the hips up, and fire from the hips down, surrounded by a rainbow radiance.

… That was the appearance of the likeness of glory of God. And I saw, and I fell on my face. And I heard the voice of someone speaking. (Ezekiel 1:28)

Then God gives him instructions.

Ezekiel’s first vision reads as if he saw something indescribable, and is laboring to describe it. The haftarah reading for Shavuot ends by skipping ahead to one more verse:

Then a spirit carried me away, and behind me I heard a great earthquake sound: “Blessed is the kavod of God in its place.” (Ezekiel 3:12)

kavod (כָּבוֹד) = glory, magnificence, weight. (In reference to God, kavod is sometimes translated as “presence”. It could also mean the splendor of a manifestation of God.)

Where is the place of God’s kavod?

For the Israelites in the book of Exodus, the place of God’s magnificent presence is Mount Sinai. For the people living in Judah during the time of the first temple, or in Judea during the time of the second temple, God’s earthly place was Jerusalem, and the way to connect with God was to bring gifts to the temple—practical gifts, like animals to burn into smoke for God, and bread for the priests to eat. And for the prophet in the book of Ezekiel, the place of God’s glory is wherever the hand of God comes upon him and God appears to him in a vision, even if he is in enemy territory.

For Jews today, the place of God’s manifestation might be in a group of people studying Exodus and Ezekiel all night on Shavuot, until physical exhaustion and the surreal visions of Ezekiel tip us over the edge into a brief mystical connection with the divine. There is more than one way to be awake.

  1. Leviticus 23:29-43, Nehemiah 8:14-17.
  2. Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 68b.
  3. Exodus 19:18. A shofar is a wind instrument consisting of the horn of a ram or goat with the tip modified as a mouthpiece.
  4. Exodus 3:1-4. The Torah alternates between calling the mountain Sinai and Choreiv, “Horeb” in English.
  5. 1 Kings 8:10-11.
  6. Rashi (11th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki) on Ezekiel 1:7.
  7. Rashi on Ezekiel 1:8.
  8. Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 4:4, 8th-9th century C.E. midrash.
  9. Shemot Rabbah 23:13, 12th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  10. Ezekiel 1:13-14.
  11. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Nevi’m, Koren Publishers, 2019, as reprinted in www.sefaria.org.

Bemidbar, Ki Tisa, & Pinchas: Counting Men, Part 1

This week’s Torah portion, Bemidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) begins with God’s instructions for a census of all adult Israelite men (except the Levites, who get a separate census). The Israelites have spend over a year at Mount Sinai; they have completed making God’s new portable sanctuary and all its gear, they have consecrated new priests, and they have heard and promised to obey hundreds of laws. Now that it is time for them to resume their journey to Canaan, God orders Moshe (“Moses” in English):

Numbering of the Israelites, by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, 19th century

“Lift up the head of the whole community of Israelites by their clans, by their fathers’ house, according to the number of names: every male by head, from the age of twenty years and above … (Numbers 1:1-3)

“Lift up the head” is a Biblical Hebrew idiom either for pardoning people or for counting them in a census. Four times in the Hebrew Bible, God orders a census of Israelite men: once before they make the portable sanctuary (Exodus 30:12-14), once before they leave Mount Sinai (Numbers 1:1-3), once before they cross the Jordan River (Numbers 26:2), and once during the reign of King David (2 Samuel 24:1-10). Women are never counted. And each time God orders a census, there is a different reason for counting the men.

First Census

The first census, in the Torah portion Ki Tisa, counts men from all the tribes, including the tribe of Levi. While giving Moshe instructions for the sanctuary, God says:

“When you lift up the head of the Israelites for their counting, then each man must give … everyone who goes through the counting: one-half shekel … Everyone who goes through the counting, from the age of twenty years and above, will give the contribution of God.”  (Exodus 30:12, 14)

A half-shekel was a small amount of silver, measured by weight.

“The rich must not increase, and the poor must not decrease, from the half-shekel [when] giving the contribution to God to ransom your souls. And you must take the silver for the ransoming from the Israelites and give it over for the service of the Tent of Meeting …” (Exodus 30:15-16)

According to Rashbam Moses collected the half-shekels at the same time as he assembled the Israelites to ask for donations to build the sanctuary. “He was to use this opportunity to count them. The silver would be given for the work in connection with the Tabernacle that required use of this metal.”1

The final Torah portion in the book of Exodus reports that the silver from this census was used to make silver sockets, hooks, and capitals for the posts supporting the curtain separating the main chamber from the Holy of Holies.2

But the purpose of the census cannot be solely to collect silver for the construction of the sanctuary, since all the other materials are freely donated.3 I think another reason is to provide an opportunity for even the poorest men among the Israelites to contribute to the sanctuary.

Women are not included in this census because they do not own property; everything belongs to their husbands, their fathers, or their sons. But all the men are equal in this first census. Every man gives the same amount of silver, and every man’s head is “lifted up”.

Second Census

The census in this week’s Torah portion, at the beginning of the book of Numbers, has a different purpose. Moshe’s instructions from God are:

“Lift up the head of the whole community of Israelites by their clans, by their fathers’ house, according to the number of names: every male by head, from the age of twenty years and up—everyone going out tzava in Israel—you will count them letzivotam, you and Aharon.” (Numbers 1:2-3)

tzava (צָבָא) = (verb) to serve in an army. (noun) army, unit of warriors, army service; assembly of attendants of God.

letzivotam (לְצִבְאֺתָם) = for their army service; for their service attending God.

The purpose of this census is to muster men for military service. Females and males under the age of twenty are not counted, because they do not serve in the army. Non-Israelite men who had joined the exodus from Egypt are also excluded from this census, which calls for the men to be listed by their “fathers’ house”, i.e. their tribe.4 And according to Siftei Hakhamim, men over twenty who are physically unfit for service are also not counted.5

Most significantly, men in the tribe of Levi are not counted. God orders a different census for them, since they serve by attending God, rather than by fighting in the army.

“However, the tribe of Levi you must not count, and their heads you must not raise among the Israelites. But you must count the Levites for the Dwelling-place of the Testimony [in the ark], and for all its gear, and for all that belongs to it. They themselves must carry the Dwelling-place and all its implements, and they themselves must minister to it, and they must camp surrounding the Dwelling-place.” (Numbers 1:49-50)

Bemidbar Rabbah compared the Levites to the palace guard, who remain to protect the king when all the other troops leave to do battle.6

Campsite plan in Numbers 1: Three Levite clans around the Tent (blue rectangle), twelve tribes outside.

“And the Israelites will camp, each according to his encampment, each according to his banner, letzivotam. But the Levites will camp surrounding the Dwelling-place …” (Numbers 1:52-53)

The twelve non-Levite tribes are told to camp at a distance from the Dwelling-place or Tent of Meeting. The Torah gives the locations of their campsites, who the leader of each tribe will be, and how many men will be under him.7 Equally explicit instructions are also given for the marching order of the tribes (with the Levites carrying the dismantled Tent of Meeting in the middle of the line). The orders conclude:

“These are the countings of the Israelites by their fathers’ houses, all the countings of the camps, letzivotam: 603,550. But the Levites were not counted among the Israelites, as God had commanded Moshe.” (Numbers 2:32-33)

Why is this census necessary? Tur HaArokh explained:

“It was necessary for both Moses and the princes to know the numbers of each tribe and army group in order to be able to account for each soldier after the campaign, and to determine if there had been any casualties and how many there had been.”8

It is reasonable to organize the army now, before the Israelites leave Mount Sinai and march north to the Negev Desert. The southern border of Canaan is not many days away from Mount Sinai, by foot.

But although the people always knew they were headed for Canaan, they did not know they would have to fight to take the land until the census in the portion Bemidbar. Shortly after they arrived at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus, God promised to “annihilate” the people already living in Canaan,9 and said:

“My terror I will send ahead of you, and I will panic all the peoples among whom you come. And I will give all your enemies to you by the nape of the neck. I will send the hornet of despair ahead of you, and it will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from in front of you. … Little by little I will drive them out from in front of you, until you have been fruitful and taken possession of the land.” (Exodus 23:27-28, 30)

But now, after being counted in the census and receiving their marching orders, the Israelite men realize that they will have to do the driving out. And they have never been in an army before.

When they reach the border, Moshe sends scouts to check out the land of Canaan to the north. Upon their return, ten of the twelve scouts insist that the Canaanites are too big and strong for the Israelites to defeat in battle. The Israelite men refuse to fight. (See my post Shelach Lekha: Sticking Point.) So God puts the divine plan on hold while the people spend 40 years in the wilderness.

Third census

Mustering an army is also one purpose of the third census in the bible.

The next generation of Israelite men, more confident about fighting than their fathers, conquer two kingdoms: Cheshbon and Bashan, both east of the Jordan River. Across the Jordan to the west lies the northern part of Canaan, their final destination.

But while they are camped near the Jordan, many of the Israelite men are seduced into worshiping a foreign god. So God sends a plague that kills them. (See my post Balak & Pinchas: How to Stop a Plague, Part 1.) Then God tells Moshe:

“Lift up the head of the whole community of Israelites, from the age of twenty years and up, by their fathers’ house—everyone going out tzava in Israel.” (Numbers 26:2)

Naturally Moses and the leaders of the tribes will need to know how many soldiers each tribe can contribute to the conquest of Canaan. The Torah proceeds with the genealogy and totals for every tribe except Levi, and concludes:

These are the countings of the Israelites: 601,730. And God spoke to Moshe, saying: “To these you will distribute the land as an inheritance, by the enumerated names.” (Numbers 26:51-53)

After that there is a genealogy and count of the Levites,

… because they had not been counted among the Israelites, since they were not given an inheritance among the Israelites. (Numbers 26:62)

All the Israelite men except the Levites will be soldiers during the conquest of Canaan, and landowners afterward. The Levites will guard the sanctuary and keep the religion going during the conquest, and afterward they will continue to be religious functionaries; they can own houses in various towns, but not land.

Thus God orders the third census of Israelite men in order to determine both army divisions and land distribution.

Three censuses for the divine plan

The first three times that God orders a census of Israelite men, the purpose is to advance God’s big plan for the Israelites: to rescue them from Egypt, to give them the land of Canaan, and to make them a people who worship God exclusively and obey God’s rules for religion and government. This divine plan is first announced to Moshe at the burning bush on Mount Sinai, and its fulfillment is the underlying driver of the biblical story from that day until the end of the book of Joshua.

The first census, in the portion Ki Tisa in Exodus, requires every man to give a half-shekel toward the creation of God’s sanctuary. Every man counts. The God who orders this census seems to be considering the psychology of the Israelites as they are steered away from worshiping a golden idol and toward the religion God wants.

The second census, in the portion Bemidbar in Numbers, begins mustering an army to conquer Canaan. Although God has encouraged the Israelites by promising to make it easy, an army is still necessary for operations on the ground. This census is ordered by a practical God.

The third census, in the portion Pinchas in Numbers, prepares for the conquest of Canaan by the next generation of Israelite men. This census is even more practical than the second one, since it provides information for both military campaigns and the allotment of land once Canaan is vanquished.

The God portrayed in the Torah creates the whole world, including human beings, and continues to have total control of the weather. But history depends on what humans do. And God recognizes that the Israelite men must be counted and organized in order to carry out God’s plan.

(The fourth census, in the second book of Samuel, occurs after David has become king of the whole territory of Israel and Judah, the majority of the land called Canaan, and the Israelites live in security. This census differs from the first three, and I will discuss it in my post two weeks from now: 2 Samuel: Counting Men, Part 2.)

  1. 12th-century Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, know by the acronym Rashbam, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  2. Exodus 38:25-28.
  3. Exodus 35:21, 36:5.
  4. C.f. 12th-century rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra.
  5. Siftei Hakhamim is a 17th-century commentary on Rashi’s Torah commentary.
  6. Bemidbar Rabbah is an 11th-12th century collection of commentary on the book of Numbers.
  7. See my post Bemidbar & Naso: Four Directions of Service.
  8. Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher (1269-1343), Tur HaArokh, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  9. Exodus 23:23.

Behar: How to Worship

In this week’s Torah portion, Behar (Leviticus 25:1-26:2), God declares:

“… the Israelites are my servants; they are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Y-H-V-H, your elohim!” (Leviticus 25:55)

elohim (אֱלֹהִים) = gods (plural of eloha = god); the God of Israel.

How are the Israelites supposed to serve God?

Serving a god, in the Ancient Near East, meant tending to the god’s supposed needs, especially bringing the god food. The book of Leviticus describes how the Israelites bring animals and grain products as offerings to the God of Israel, and priests burn them so that God can enjoy the smell of the smoke. (See my post Tzav & Jeremiah: Smoke vs. Altruism.)

Furthermore, the Torah is packed with God’s commands; Maimonides1 found 613 of them, dealing with both religious and social life.

Yet right after God claims all Israelites as God’s servants, the portion Behar concludes with one verse on how not to worship, and one verse on how to worship God. And these two verses say nothing about making offerings at the altar or obeying commands.

How not to worship

“You must not make for yourselves eliylim, or a pesel; and a matzeivah you must not erect for yourselves; and a maskit stone you must not place in your land for prostrations upon it; because I, Y-H-V-H, am your elohim.” (Leviticus 26:1)

eliylim (אֱלִילִם) = pseudo-gods, worthless gods, idols.

pesel (פֶּסֶל) = carved image; idol of cut stone or wood (from the verb pasal = carve).

matzeivah (מַצֵּבָה) = standing stone, stele.

maskit (מַשׂכּית) = image carved into a paving-stone or a wall; decoration, real or imagined.

What is God saying? Here are three possibilities:

  • Don’t worship pseudo-gods or their idols.
  • Don’t worship God through any physical images.
  • Don’t worship God by bowing down or prostrating yourself.

Don’t worship pseudo-gods

Classic medieval commentators, including Rashi,2 interpreted this verse as forbidding the worship of other gods. They pointed to the passage preceding God’s statement that all Israelites are God’s servants, which covers the manumission of Israelites sold as slaves to resident aliens. These Israelites might be tempted to worship their masters’ idols, or to work on Shabbat (the sabbath).

In the 16th century, Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno reinterpreted the passage as addressing the Israelites in exile in Babylon. Just because God had let King Nebuchadnezzar conquer Jerusalem and deport them to Babylon did not mean that their God had rejected them, and they were now free to worship other gods. Sforno cited God’s words in the next Torah portion, Bechukotai:3

“And also even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, and I will not cast them away to finish them off, to break my covenant with them. For I am Y-H-V-H, their God!” (Leviticus 26:44)

Don’t worship God through physical images

A later opinion4 is that the verse in Behar is a command not to worship the God of Israel in the same ways that other peoples worshiped their gods.

When people worship eliylim in the Hebrew Bible, they bow down to them,5 or consult them for an oracle.6 They also bow down to a pesel, which is forbidden in the “Ten Commandments”:

“You must not make for yourself a pesel, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or what is on the earth below, or what is in the waters beneath the earth. You must not bow down to them, and you must not serve them; because I, Y-H-V-H your elohim, am a jealous god …” (Exodus 20:4-5 and Deuteronomy 5:8-9)

Matzeivah of a god in Aram-Damascus, 9th-8th century BCE, Israel Museum, photo by M.C.

Bowing down is a gesture indicating humility in front of a superior—a king or a god.7 In addition to the many biblical references to bowing down to a pesel, the book of Habakkuk mocks people who expect a pesel to give instructions,8 and second Isaiah mocks people who pray to a pesel for rescue.9

A standing stone, called a matzeivah, can be erected to mark an important boundary,10 or a significant event.11 But when Yaakov (“Jacob” in English) wakes up from his dream of angels going up and down and God standing over him, he not only sets up a matzeivah, but ritually pours oil on top of it and vows that if God protects him until he returns,

“… Y-H-V-H will be my elohim, and this stone that I have set up as a matzeivah will be a house of Elohim, and from everything that you give me, I will set aside a tenth for you.” (Genesis 28:21-22)

On Yaakov’s return trip 20 years later he stops at the same spot. Perhaps the matzeivah has fallen down (or perhaps a redactor inserted a second story about a standing stone at Bethel), because Yaakov sets up another one.

And Yaakov erected a matzeivah at the place where he was spoken to, a matzeivah of stone, and he poured a libation on it and he poured oil on it. (Genesis 35:14)

Later in the Torah, priests pour libations at the altar as part of their service to God.

Bowing down to a standing stone is a common form of Canaanite worship in Exodus through Jeremiah, so the Israelites are repeatedly urged to smash every Canaanite matzeivah.

The word maskit appearsonly six times in the Hebrew Bible, and half of those occurrences are unrelated to gods or idols. In Ezekiel 8:12 the walls of the chambers of the former temple in Jerusalem are carved with maskit depicting creeping things and detestable beasts. Only Leviticus 26:1 and Numbers 33:52 include maskit in theirlists of Canaanite objects of worship that must be destroyed, and only the verse in Leviticus, in the portion Behar, specifies that a maskit stone is used for prostrations.

Don’t worship God by bowing

The principle way to worship all of these items, eliylim, pesel, matzeivah, or maskit, is to bow down to it, sometimes to the point of full prostration. The God of Israel definitely prohibits bowing to idols. Bowing down in homage to God is not forbidden, and characters in the Torah do prostrate themselves to God—sometimes on the impulse of the moment,12 and sometimes as part of a ritual.13

Ritual prostration to God, pointing in the general direction of Jerusalem, remains in some Jewish services today: the Tachanun part of some weekday services (at traditional synagogues) and, most notably, the Grand Aleinu on Yom Kippur.

Yet worshiping God (as opposed to pseudo-gods) by bowing down or prostrating oneself is not mentioned in this week’s Torah portion.

How to worship

Instead the portion Behar ends with God’s command:

“My sabbaths you must observe, and my holy place you must hold in awe. I am Y-H-V-H!” (Leviticus 26:2)

The implication is that bowing down is not the most important means of worship. The best way to worship God is to observe Shabbat, and to show reverence toward God’s sanctuary.

Observing Shabbat means refraining from work on the seventh day of every week—and letting your family, your slaves, and your animals rest from labor that day as well.14 The underlying idea is that then one can focus on gratitude to God. According to Zornberg, “Unplugged from one’s usual productive activities, one is left in a kind of vacuum. It is this state that is to be ‘for God.’”15

Therefore, work that counts as serving God is still done on Shabbat: priests used to offer extra animals at the altar that day,16 and today those who conduct the Torah service on Shabbat must carry out their (hopefully joyful) responsibilities.

What does holding God’s holy place in awe mean?

Steinsaltz wrote that when the temple in Jerusalem stood, “The obligation to revere the Temple includes the scrupulous observance of the sacrificial rituals and the preservation of the Temple’s ritual purity.”17 Thus the requirement to hold God’s holy place in awe might include worship through turning offerings into smoke, after all.

And Hirsch wrote: “… we can pay Him homage by paying homage to His Law. Only by prostrating ourselves before His Torah do we prostrate ourselves before Him. For this reason, the only place fit for prostration is His holy place, the Sanctuary that was established for His Torah. … Even in ruins, this place remains consecrated ground …”19

However, although the book of Leviticus was written after the 6th-century B.C.E. destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem, the events it describes take place at Mount Sinai immediately after the Israelites have finished making a portable tent and its furnishings for God to dwell in. In Leviticus through Deuteronomy, God’s holy place is not a temple; it is the tent-sanctuary in the center of the Israelite camp, wherever it may be.

According to Sforno, God’s holy place that we are to hold in awe “could be the tent sanctuary, or the temple—or a synagogue or Torah study hall”.19

After all, according to Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion in Pirkei Avot, “… if two sit together and there are words of Torah [spoken] between them, then the Shekhinah [God’s presence] abides among them.”20

Experiencing a sense of the numinous is part of human nature. So is the impulse to acknowledge and reach out to something ineffable. For thousands of years, many human beings have channeled this impulse into worship of one or more gods.

The Hebrew Bible does not have a separate word corresponding to the English word “worship”. But it does have words for bowing down or prostrating oneself (hishtachavot), service (avodah), and prayer (tefilah).

The Torah forbids us to bow down to an idol. But it does let us use beautiful objects to anchor our worship. The ancient Israelites may have scorned the carved stone images of the Canaanites, but the entrance of God’s portable tent-sanctuary had a cloth screen embroidered with rich blue, purple, and red yarn, and posts overlaid with gold.21 The first and second temples in Jerusalem were even more ornamental.

A visit to the temple meant not only a feast for the eyes, but an overwhelming experience for the other senses. The Levites chanted psalms and played musical instruments. Priests burned aromatic incense. When you brought an animal offering, you laid your hands on the beast’s warm, hairy head. When you brought a wholeness-offering, some of the roasted meat was returned for your party to feast on.

When we make our religion too abstract, we approach the divine with only one part of ourselves, the rational function of our minds. But our minds are much bigger than that. Reading a prayer silently makes me think about the meaning of words; singing a prayer lifts my spirit. Thinking about time and space impresses my intellect; looking at a blossoming tree or a smiling face moves my heart with a feeling of the divine.

In other words, do not get stranded in abstract theories about what God is. But also do not get stuck at the level of a stone carving, or picture of a bearded man in the sky. Let the rituals, the songs, and the stories of your religion move your heart. And acknowledge that all these things are part of the Holy.

  1. 12th century rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known as Maimonides or Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot. Subsequent lists of God’s commands (mitzvot) are based on his work.
  2. Rashi is the acronym of 11th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki, whose commentary has been a reference point for Jewish exegesis over the past millennium.
  3. The Hebrew calendar is lunar. In years with 12 months (including this year of 5786), there are some weeks when two consecutive Torah portions are read. When there is a year with 13 months to adjust the lunar calendar to the solar cycle, each Torah portion is read on a separate week.
  4. E.g. 19th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Vayikra, Part 2, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2000, p. 934-5; and 21st-century Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, 2019.
  5. Isaiah 2:8, 2:20.
  6. Isaiah 19:3.
  7. C.f. prostration before a king in Genesis 27:29, 2 Samuel 9:6, and I Kings 1:31.
  8. Habakkuk 2:18.
  9. Isaiah 44:17.
  10. Genesis 41:44-53.
  11. Genesis 35:20, Exodus 24:4-7.
  12. E.g. Exodus 34:8, Leviticus 9:24.
  13. E.g. Deuteronomy 26:10, Nehemiah 8:6.
  14. Exodus 20:8-10 and Deuteronomy 5:14 (in the “Ten Commandments”).
  15. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus, Schocken Books, New York, 2022, p. 232.
  16. E.g. Numbers 28:9-10.
  17. Steinsaltz, ibid., in www.sefaria.org.
  18. Hirsch, ibid., translation by Daniel Haberman, p. 937.
  19. 16th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  20. Pirkei Avot 3:2, circa 200 C.E., translation by Joshua Kulp in www.sefaria.org.
  21. Exodus 26:36-37.

Emor: God of Life

Death is not holy.

The main way that the Israelites worship God in the Hebrew Bible is by burning kosher animals on the altar, so the smoke rises to the heavens. These animals become holy as soon as they are dedicated to God.1 Once they are slaughtered, priests are responsible for splashing their blood on the altar, butchering them, and laying out the pieces over the fire. The death of cattle, goats, and sheep is part of the process of worship.

The Priests, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

But the death of a human being is different. Anyone who touches a dead human body, or enters a tent or house containing a corpse, must complete seven days of purification before they are allowed to enter precincts of God’s sanctuary or temple. (See my post Chukat: Death and the Red Cow, Part 1.) Worship of the God of Israel must remain completely separate from the experience of death of a human being.

And since priests in the ancient Israelite system are the intermediaries between God and the rest of the people, the rules are more stringent for them.

When priests are exposed to death

This week’s Torah portion, Emor (Leviticus/Vayikra 21:1-24:23) begins with this instruction from God regarding the priests, the descendants of Aharon (“Aaron” in English):

For a dead person among his people, he [a priest] must not make himself tamei.” (Leviticus 21:1)

tamei (טָמֵא) = impure, contaminated, defiled—in a way that makes one unfit to approach God.

The nearest relatives of someone who has died are supposed to participate in the burial. So although priests must avoid dead bodies as much as possible, there are exceptions.

—except for his near kin, the one close to him: for his mother, or for his father, or for his son, or for his daughter, or for his brother; or for his virgin sister, the one close to him who has never belonged to a man, for her he may make himself tamei. (Leviticus 21:2-3)

Apparently in a male-centered culture a man is closer to a married brother than to a married sister.

What about his wife? Hirsch wrote that his wife becomes his near kin when they are married, and she does not need to be listed separately.2 Other commentators find the priest’s wife in the next verse:

He must not make himself tamei, a baal among his people, to profane himself. (Leviticus 21:4)

baal (בַּעַל) =husband, owner, master, god.

Ramban interpreted baal here as a prominent man among the Israelites, and argued that any prominent man, including a priest, should not demean himself by becoming defiled by a dead body.3

Others interpret baal here as a husband. One classic opinion was that the verse applies to a hereditary priest who was disqualified from priestly duties because he married a divorcée or another category of woman whom priests are forbidden to marry. Since he no longer serves in the sanctuary, he does not need to be ritually pure at all times. But according to Rashi, this priest is still not allowed to profane himself by attending his wife’s burial, as long as there are other people who can bury her.4

I prefer Rashbam’s simpler explanation of the verse: priests are forbidden from acting like the husbands of the rest of the Israelites, who bury their wives. “No husband among the tribe of the priests is to defile himself ritually, as he would thereby desecrate his status as a priest.”5

How close the husband and wife are emotionally does not matter when it comes to laws of purity.

A practical explanation of the rules minimizing the contact between priests and corpses is that God’s sanctuary or temple must always be staffed with enough priests to serve the public by making offerings and by ruling on religious questions. Since a priest, like anyone else, must be separated from the center of religious life for seven days after being near a dead person, those seven-day leaves of absence must be limited.

The Baal haTurim wrote: “As a result of our verses here, priests who do not take part in funerals do not do so because they consider themselves superior, but because the Torah forced them to act in what to some might appear in the wrong light. They maintain a state of purity for God’s sake, so as always to be on “call,” if the occasion should arise.”6

Holy they must be to their God, and they must not profane the name of their God; since they bring near the fire-offerings of God, they bring near the food of their God, then they must be holy! (Leviticus 21:6)

The Torah also considers it more important for priests to honor God than to honor family members who have died. Sforno noted: “… the prime purpose of burying and eulogizing the dead is to render honor to them. This conflicts with the honor the priests have to accord to God on an ongoing basis.”7

When priests mourn

This week’s Torah portion also reminds priests not to disfigure themselves in grief over the dead, a common custom for men in the Ancient Near East.

They must not make a bald spot on their head, and the edge of their beard they must not shave off, and on their skin they must not carve a carving. (Leviticus 21:5)

Other Israelites are forbidden to shave their eyebrows for the dead,8 but priests are forbidden to shave any part of their head. Like other Israelites, priests are also forbidden to mourn by shaving the edges of their beards or cutting their skin.9 The Torah mentions these alterations to the body because in neighboring countries men expressed the depth of their mourning by yanking out their hair and gashing their skin.10

Hirsch’s explanation is: “Upon the loss of a loved one, the survivor indicates that his own body, too, has lost its value.”11

A lack of respect for one’s body would not be a problem in an ascetic religion that values only the ineffable soul. But Judaism has always praised and blessed physical health and comfort as gifts from God. Failing to respect the living human body, according to many commentators, means failing to respect the God of Life.12

The high priest

High Priest, A History of Costume, by Braun & Schneider, 1861-1880

The rules in the Torah portion Emor are even stricter for the high priest than for his subordinate priests.

And the priest who is greater than his brothers, upon whose head has been poured the oil of anointing, and whose hand has been consecrated to dress in the garments:  he must not neglect [the hair on] his head, and he must not tear his garments.” (Leviticus 21:10)

To this day, Jewish mourning customs include tearing a garment (or at least a symbolic strip of cloth pinned to the chest) at the funeral, and avoiding shaving or trimming one’s hair for the first 30 days after the death. This week’s Torah portion forbids a high priest from doing even that much to mourn a family member. Since his head was anointed with oil to make him the high priest, he must continue to keep his hair trimmed. And since he wears special vestments, he must keep them intact.

“And he must not enter [a place] with any dead person; [even] for his father or for his mother he must not make himself tamei.” (Leviticus 21:11)

The other priests are allowed to go into the tent or room where the dead body of a parent, a child, or a sibling lay, even though it would contaminate them for seven days. The high priest may not do so. Furthermore, he must not leave the precincts of the tent-sanctuary or temple for the burial.

“And he must not leave the, and he must not profane the Holy Place of his God; because the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him. I am God!” (Leviticus 21:12)

Ramban explained: “Instead, the honor of the Sanctuary and its Service is to be greater to him than his honor of and love for the dead.”13

And Sforno added: “People would conclude that giving honor to the dead is more important than to remain within the sphere of God’s immediate presence, something he enjoys as the exceptional privilege of being exposed to on an ongoing basis.”14

Although the Torah requires all of the priests to serve as public symbols of holiness, the high priest is the ultimate symbol. He even wears a unique gold medallion on his forehead engraved with the words “Holy to God”.15 He may grieve in his heart for someone who has died, but he must not show any sign of grieving in public—like Aharon, the first high priest, when his two oldest sons are killed by God’s fire inside the tent-sanctuary.

And Moshe said to Aharon: “It is what God spoke: Through those near to me I will be proven holy, and in front of all the people I will be honored.” And Aharon was silent. (Leviticus 10:3)

Moshe sends two of Aharon’s cousins, who were not consecrated as priests, into the tent to carry out the bodies.

The honor that the priests, especially the high priest, give to God sets the benchmark for all the Israelites.

As a symbol of God, a priest must always stand for life, life in the body, in this world. In Judaism, this life is God’s great gift to us.

Of course, life and death must co-exist in this world; you cannot have one without the other. But we can choose which aspect of reality to focus on and appreciate. When I meet people whose personal religion revolves around an afterlife, I wonder if they are fully appreciating this life, in this world. I find that the more attention I pay to everything that is alive, right now, the more I appreciate life, the more I rejoice in creation, and the more I want to sing praises.

Psalm 114, using the term “Yah” (יָהּ) for God, says:

The dead cannot praise Yah,
nor any who go down into silence.

But we will bless Yah,

From now until forever. Praise Yah! (Psalm 114:17-18)

In Hebrew, “Praise Yah!” is Hallelu-Yah (הַלְלוּ־יָהּ).

  1. Leviticus 27:9.
  2. 19th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Vayikra, Part 2, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2000, p. 700-701.
  3. Ramban is the acronym of 13th-century rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, a.k.a. Nachmanides.
  4. Rashi is the acronym of 11th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki.
  5. Rashbam (acronym of 12th-century rabbi Shmuel ben Meir), translation in www.sefaria.org.
  6. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 – c. 1343), a.k.a. the Baal haTurim, Tur HaArokh, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  7. 16th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  8. Deuteronomy 14:1. See my post Re-eih: Eyebrows for the Dead.
  9. Leviticus 19:27-28.
  10. Cutting or piercing the skin was also part of tattooing, practiced in Mesopotamia to mark the ownership of slaves.
  11. Hirsch, p. 703.
  12. The epithet “God of Life” first appears in Deuteronomy 5:23, and is found often in the books of the Prophets.
  13. Ramban, ibid.
  14. Sforno, ibid.
  15. See my post Tetzaveh: Flower on the Forehead.

Acharey Mot & Kedoshim: Cut Off

How do the Israelites and the people who left Egypt with them clear out a year’s worth of guilt for misdeeds? And what should they be doing in order to be holy?

The Hebrew calendar has fewer weeks this year, so this week has a double Torah portion: Acharey Mot (Leviticus 16:1-18:30), with its annual ritual for atonement; and Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27), with its holiness codes. We learn this week that we must cast out our misdeeds, but not the foreigners among us.

A ritual with two goats

Goats, by Dugal Steward Walker, 1921

Once a year, on Yom Kippur (“Day of Atonement”), the high priest makes atonement for the wrongdoing of all the Israelites, rendering the people and their sanctuary pure again. The most important part of the long ritual requires two male goats, preferably identical.1

The rules for the ritual refer to Aharon (“Aaron” in English), the first high priest.

He must take the two se-irim and stand them in front of Y-H-V-H at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. And Aharon must place lots upon the two se-irim: one lot for Y-H-V-H and one lot for Azazeil. (Leviticus/Vayikra 16:7-8)

se-irim (שְׂעִרִם) = goats; goat-demons. Singular: sa-ir (שָׂעִיר) = hairy male goat; long hair; rain shower. 

We do not know who or what Azazeil is. (See my post Acharey Mot: Azazeil.)

Then Aharon must bring forward the sa-ir for which the lot for Y-H-V-H came up, and he must make it a chataat. But the sa-ir for which the lot for Azazeil came up, it shall stand alive in front of Y-H-V-H, to make atonement upon it—to send it to Azazeilin the wilderness. (Leviticus16:9-10)

chataat (חַטָּאת) = infraction, violation of a rule (often inadvertent); guilt offering, offering to atone for an infraction.

The goat designated for God is slaughtered and burned as a chataat, an offering that is normally made when individuals realize that they unintentionally violated one of God’s rules.2 Offering one hairy goat to God on Yom Kippur covers any violations that were not already atoned for, removing the impurity caused by those deeds.

The high priest sprinkles the blood of the slaughtered goat on the lid of the ark in the Holy of Holies (along with the blood of a bull that serves as the chataat for the priests). But this blood only purifies the Tent of Meeting. The high priest also sprinkles the blood of both animals on the altar outside the Tent of Meeting, purifying it as well.

This is not enough, however, to purify the people.

Sending Out the Scapegoat, by William James Webb, 19th century

He finishes making atonement for the Holy place and the Tent of Meeting and the altar. Then he brings forward the live sa-ir. And Aharon must lean his two hands on the head of the live sa-ir and confess over it all the iniquities3 of the Israelites, and all their rebellious-transgressions,4 for all their chataat. And he will place them on the head of the sa-ir, and he will send it free by the hand of a designated man into the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:20-21)

What is the high priest’s confession on behalf of the Israelites? According to the early Talmudic work Sifra, the high priest recites:

“Please, God, atone, I beseech You, for the iniquities, and for the rebellious-transgressions, and for the infractions, which they have committed, and transgressed, and violated before You, Your people, the house of Israel.”5

According to the Talmud,6 the iniquities and the rebellious-transgressions are intentional sins, which individuals were not allowed to atone for by bringing chataat offerings during the year. But once a year, the high priest could make atonement for everyone’s iniquities and rebellious-transgressions by transferring them to the head of the hairy goat. Sifra explains:

“Once he confesses his iniquities and rebellious-transgressions, they are regarded as unwitting sins before Him.”7

In Yom Kippur services today there are no high priests or goats. The congregation confesses to more specific categories of wrongdoing: “We have betrayed, we have robbed, we have slandered …”8 Individuals are supposed to apologize and make amends to the people they have wronged before Yom Kippur begins. The purpose of the Yom Kippur ritual is to atone for the other ways we have fallen short, clearing our consciences so we can start again with a clean slate, at peace with God.

In both the ancient Yom Kippur ritual and the current one, according to 19th-century Rabbi Mecklenburg, “… the main understanding of confession and atonement is throwing away and abandoning the sin.”9

The instructions regarding the live goat conclude:

Then the sa-ir will carry off on itself all their iniquities, to a cut-off land. And he must send free the sa-ir into the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:22)

Perhaps when the book of Leviticus was written (possibly in the 6th century B.C.E.), there were still many stretches of desert wilderness that were inaccessible and unexplored—places where a goat could graze and live out its life without ever encountering a human being again. But by end of the second temple period in 70 C.E., no place was truly cut off from people.

By the first century C.E., the designated man took the goat to a cliff, tied its horns to a rock, and pushed the rock off. “And it would not reach halfway down the mountain until it was torn limb from limb.”10

Goat-demons

Later in the portion Acharey Mot, the word se-irim is used for goat-demons.

They must not slaughter any more of their slaughterings for the se-irim they are whoring after. This is a decree forever for them throughout their generations.  (Leviticus 17:7)

The people must not slaughter a goat and burn it up into smoke for any supernatural being other than God.

The Torah often refers to worshiping other gods in terms of prostitution. We do not know whether some people worshiped goat-demons with animal sacrifices, or whether Azazeil was considered the god of the goat-demons. When the Israelites sent a live goat carrying their misdeeds out into the wilderness, were they sending it to where the goat-demons lived?

And to them you must say: Any man of the House of Israel, or of the geir who yagur in their midst, who offers a rising-offering or a slaughter, and does not bring it to the Tent of Meeting to make it [an offering] to Y-H-V-H: that man he will be cut off from among his people! (Leviticus 17:8-9)

geir (גֵר) =resident alien, immigrant. (From the root verb gur, גּוּר = sojourn, live somewhere as a resident alien.)

yagur (יָגוּר) = dwells as a resident alien. (Another form of the verb gur.)

Everyone, even residents who came from other countries, must make offerings only to Y-H-V-H, the God of Israel. Religious tolerance was not part of ancient Israelite thought.

The Immigrant

But acceptance and kindness toward immigrants was. The second Torah portion for this week, Kedoshim, lists rules for being holy—some from the Ten Commandments, some from other laws in Exodus, and some that prescribe other ethical behavior. Two of the laws in Kedoshim stand out because they use the word “love”.11

You must not hate your kinsman in your heart; you must definitely reprove your comrade; then you will not carry guilt because of him … And you must love your fellow as yourself. I am God! (Leviticus 19:17-18)

And when yagur with you a geir in your land, you must not oppress him. Like a native citizen among you he shall be to you, the geir who is a geir with you; and you must love him as yourself. For you were geirim in the land of Egypt! I am God, your god! (Leviticus 19:33-34)

geirim (גֵרִים) = plural of geir.

This is not the only Torah portion that dictates correct feelings. For example, the last of the Ten Commandments prohibits coveting.12 It is easier to act as if you love someone, but the feeling of love can be cultivated, with enough determination and practice.

Loving geirim goes hand in hand with treating them the same way you treat people in your own group—and the same way you want others to treat you. As Hillel the Elder said in the first century B.C.E., “That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”13

It helps to empathize with the person you want to love. The Torah portion Kedoshim reminds the Israelites that their own ancestors were resident aliens in Egypt, where they were mercilessly oppressed. Therefore geirim should not only be treated as well as the ethnic Israelites, but given extra consideration as a disadvantaged group.

The disadvantaged groups that must be given ample opportunities to glean fields and orchards are the poor, the fatherless, widows, and immigrants.14 Deuteronomy reminds the Israelites that God chose the Israelites because God loved their ancestors, and then describes God as—

The one who provides justice for the fatherless and the widow, and the one who loves the geir, giving him food and clothing. So you must love the geir, since you were geirim in the land of Egypt! (Deuteronomy 10:18-10:19).

The Hebrew Bible also specifies that geirim are subject to the same laws as natives, both the civil laws and some of the religious laws. One of the religious laws that also applies to geirim is a requirement for observing Yom Kippur:

And it is a decree for you forever: In the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, you must humble your souls [with fasting], and you must not do any labor—neither the native nor the geir who is a geir among you. Because on this day atonement will be made for you, to purify you from all your wrongdoing; you will become pure in front of Y-H-V-H. (Acharey Mot, Leviticus 16:29-30)

The implication is that when the live hairy goat carries the misdeeds of the whole community into the wilderness, it carries the misdeeds of the geirim as well as the native Israelites.

Leviticus urges us to purify ourselves by exiling our guilt to a place that is cut off from normal live. It is good to clear out your guilt after you have done something wrong, and confessed or apologized, and made amends in any way that is possible—whether you transfer it to a goat and send it to a faraway land, or spend over 24 hours fasting and praying on Yom Kippur.

Leviticus also orders us not to cut off immigrants and resident aliens, but to love them as we love ourselves and our own people. We must not oppress immigrants by subjecting them to slave labor making bricks—or by shooting at them, or by arresting and jailing them for reasons that do not apply to native citizens, or by deporting them to distant lands—lands that the immigrants may never have seen, lands that may be even more hostile than your own country.

We must not transfer our guilts or fears to a human scapegoat.

  1. Talmud Bavli, Yoma 62b.
  2. Leviticus 4:1-3, 4:13-15, 4:22-24, 4:27-29.
  3. The Hebrew word is avonot (עֲוֹנֺת) = iniquities, wicked deeds.
  4. The Hebrew word is pisheyhem (פִּשְֵׁיהֶם) = rebellious transgressions of God’s rules.
  5. Sifra (a book on Leviticus written 250-350 C.E.), “Acharei Mot”, Section 4:6.
  6. Talmud Yerushalmi, Yoma 3:7:6, and Talmud Bavli, Yoma 36b.
  7. Sifra, Ibid.
  8. Yom Kippur Machzor, Ashamnu section in the Amidah.
  9. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, HaKesav veHaKabbalah, c. 1829-1839, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  10. Talmud Bavli, Yoma 6a, translated by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, William Davidson Edition, www.sefaria.org.
  11. The Hebrew word for “love” is ahav (אָהַב).
  12. Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 5:18.
  13. Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 31:1, translated by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, William Davidson Edition, www.sefaria.org.
  14. Leviticus 19:10 and 23:22.